GBD IAAS Manager: A Tool for Managing Infrastructure-as-a-Service for Private and Hybrid Clouds

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1 GBD IAAS Manager: A Tool for Managing Infrastructure-as-a-Service for Private and Hybrid Clouds Carlos Roberto Valêncio valencio@ibilce.unesp.br Diogo Lemos Guimarães diogolg06@gmail.com Andrielson Ferreira da Silva andrielson@msn.com Adriano Mauro Cansian adriano@ibilce.unesp.br Abstract The increase in the demand for computing resources with scalable infrastructure and easily managed has stimulated the emergence of IaaS Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers in public clouds, as well as the creation of open source IaaS solutions for institutions that prefer to implant their own private cloud. Aiming at expanding the cost-benefit, it is often necessary to integrate public and private cloud services. However, the wide variety of interfaces for communication with the services provided by each solution may impair the management of these clouds by the current environment management tool. In this context, is proposed a management tool for private and hybrid clouds, referred to as GBD IaaS Manager, which offers as original contribution, support for migration of virtual elements to these environments, allowing for a better utilization of computing resources and the load balancing among private and hybrid clouds. Keywords cloud computing; Infrastructure-as-a-Service IaaS; hybrid cloud management I. INTRODUCTION The use of the cloud computing model is becoming even more frequent, either by large companies and governmental institutions [1] or by end-users [2]. In this scenario, the Infrastructure-as-a-Service IaaS is useful [3] for providing virtually infinite computing resources [4] at a hardware level CPU, RAM memory and storage. IaaS has a great advantage of allowing the user to worry only with the amount of resources necessary for executing its applications, while the service provider is responsible for ensuring service availability [5]. Due to the IaaS attractive trade potential, large corporations in the area of Information Technology IT, such as Amazon and Microsoft, for example, have been encouraged to create public clouds and sell them to users from all over the world, benefiting from the computing power often underused from their datacenters [2]. Additionally, the opensource technologies enable many large companies to create their own IaaS private clouds aiming at integrating their infrastructure and enabling a better resource allocation and ease of management. When a company needs resources beyond their private cloud capacity, it may use the services from a public provider by integrating both environments and creating a hybrid cloud [4]. However, as each IaaS cloud have their own standard of Application Programming Interface - API to communicate with cloud services, to create a management environment that may integrate clouds from several providers is not a simple task, and this integration may be unfeasible if it is not supported by a management tool that includes private and public cloud APIs capable of handling the differences regarding the deployment of services provided by each provider [3], [6]. In this scenario, this work presents a Web tool, referred to as GBD IaaS Manager, for managing private and hybrid clouds and, as its main contribution enables the migration of virtual elements between registered environments. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed tool, some experiments in different IaaS clouds were carried out, in which the tool was capable of transferring virtual images and instances between managed environments. This work is organized as follows: in section 2, the bibliographic review and the related works are presented; in section 3, the developed tool is introduced; in section 4, the experiments and results are exhibited; in section 5, we present the conclusion.

2 II. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REVIEW In this section, is presented the basic concepts for understanding the developed work and the related works found in the literature. A. Cloud computing Cloud computing refers to applications and services that run in a distributed network, by using virtualized resources that are accessed through Internet and local networks. In this platform, resources are highly scalable and the details of the hardware, in which the software is executed, are accessed by the user [2]. It is defined as a model that allows the demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources networks, servers, storage, applications and services that may be quickly provided and released with a minimum of management effort and of interaction with the service provider [4]. The cloud is also classified according to the datacenter owner, provided that the environment may be composed of services provided by one or more providers. In the public cloud model, a cloud computing provider uses its datacenter computing capacity for providing resources to third parties through Internet. It is the most widespread model because the users may pay the provider in order to use the resources as needed [7]. A private cloud provides computing resources to a restricted group of users pertaining to the same organization that deployed it. Accordingly, the cloud computing may be useful for managing the organization s hardware and software resources [7]. The community cloud model provides greater safety than public environments without requiring the same investment made in a private cloud. Such model is characterized by a partnership between two or more organizations in order to make the private model utilization feasible and to share resources between both of them [5]. A hybrid cloud is characterized by the integration between private and public clouds. In this model, a private cloud may use the resources of a public cloud to balance the workload and to prevent performance losses in the services provided [7]. Therefore, an institution may use the computing power of its internal infrastructure (private cloud) to deal with a lower workload and, when the demand for resources reaches levels under its capacity, an institution may use public cloud resources to deal with the overload [8]. B. Virtualization The resource virtualization is an essential part of several cloud architectures as it enables an abstract and logical view regarding physical resources, such as servers, storage devices and networks. The purpose of its use in cloud computing is to make a computing resource pool available and to manage them as a whole [9]. An example is the dynamic generation of a platform for a specific application, when necessary, through a virtual solution rather than using a real machine. The most common types of virtualization used in cloud computing are: storage, networks, servers, applications and services, provided that the virtualization enables a more efficient and shared access to a resource pool. C. Infrastructure-as-a-Service model The IaaS model provides the user with an abstract view regarding the hardware computers, mass storage systems, networks, etc. obtained through an interface for managing the pool of resources [9]. In this context, the provider holds the following equipment: servers, storage, network infrastructure, among others, and the developer owns the virtualized resources required for developing applications and services [2]. This model is the foundation for all cloud computing environment as it provides services related to hardware and infrastructure equipment [5]. Its advantage is that the user may focus only in sizing the amount of technological resources required to execute his task, while the service provider ensures that such resources are available and priced according to their cumulative quantity [2]. Typically, through virtualization, these resources are abstracted, encapsulated and exposed to the upper layer and to end-users with standard interfaces, such as unified resources in IaaS form [6]. The services provided by the IaaS model may be summarized in: image, instance and volume. Virtual images are virtual machine drivers that enable read-only access and operate as an instance model [10]. Virtual instances constitute a copy of a running virtual image together with the hardware resources allocated by the user. Therefore, the instance is a running virtual machine with well-defined resources, but which may be dynamically adjusted according to the demand and which may also be remotely accessed via SSH and HTTP, for example, pursuant to the installed functionalities. Finally, the volume represents the logical units of data storage used in the instances [11]. Through the interaction between these elements it is possible to provide a virtualized and complete hardware infrastructure capable of virtually executing the same tasks executed by a physical machine, but with greater scalability [11]. D. Related Works There are few works in the literature aiming at providing a management tool that supports the integration between private and public clouds in order to obtain a hybrid environment that increases the cost-benefit of the use of cloud computing resources. One of the works found in this regard is the HybridFox, which is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that enables to manage cloud computing environments of known public and private providers [12]. Initially developed for managing Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing [13], it provides support to other platforms compatible with EC2 API, such as Eucalyptus, OpenStack and OpenNebula [14]. HybridFox provides a single interface that enables the transparent switching among several accounts of IaaS providers in order to manage the respective cloud computing environments and it has functionalities of

3 image management, virtual instances, access credentials and logical block storage [12]. Another work found in the literature is the Monsoon [15], a solution for managing multiple IaaS clustered environments based on a lower layer for IaaS proxy Web2Exchange [16]. The tool communication with the proxy is carried out by APIs based on REST architecture (Representational State Transfer). It supports the management of instances, virtual images, logical volumes, simple file storage and security aspects, such as firewall rules and RSA keys for connecting to the instances. III. GBD IAAS MANAGER Within a hybrid IaaS environment, the user may utilize the services of a public cloud when the capacity of his private infrastructure does not meet the demand for application resources. In this scenario, it is often necessary to migrate a running instance from a private cloud to a public cloud and even from virtual images that are not present in both environments [11]. The GBD IaaS Manager tool proposes a solution that supports the migration of images and instances in hybrid clouds through snapshots (instantaneous). The GBD IaaS Manager tool has three main modules: credentials, images and instances; provided that each one is responsible for managing an element from the infrastructureas-a-service model. Credentials are essential for the tool operation and are formed by the data required to authenticate the cloud service providers and to access all its resources. Data that composes a credential may vary according to the API used and it should include at least an address of the IaaS provider s authentication service (URL) and an attribute that may prove the user s identity, which is usually constituted by an user and a password. However, there may be more sophisticated forms of authentication, for example, RSA encryption key pairs, digital certificates or even biometric techniques. After the registration of the valid credentials, they are stored in the database in order to be restored when necessary and to prevent the user from entering them every time he wants to use the provider s services. Then, the tool was used to authenticate itself in the cloud provider and to obtain the endpoints of the services provided, which is the URL address of the Web service made available by the provider. The module responsible for managing virtual images supports functions related to sending images to an IaaS provider and also functions relating to the removal of images the user does not need anymore. Furthermore, the tool has functionalities obtained from image migration techniques, such as sending an image and sharing its copy with several providers, which are not found in related works and are useful to the user when creating similar instances in the several environments used one of the most relevant contributions mentioned in this work. The module responsible for managing virtual instances supports the functions related to the execution of several instances as of an image included in the IaaS provider s image repository and also functions related to the interruption or disconnection of running instances. Moreover, the tool presents functionalities obtained from the instance migration technique that differ from those found in the literature, such as the replication of a running instance to several providers through snapshots, making it easier to the user to create similar instances in the several environments used. In Fig. 1, a diagram presenting the instance migration is illustrated. The instance execution process enables the user to run one or more instances as of a virtual image existing in the image repository. In the tool interface, the user may assign a name to the instance and a number of instances to be entered. If more than one is selected, the tool creates instances with the name assigned by the user and a counter is implemented to differentiate them. In addition to the name, the tool requires information about the virtual image to be instantiated and the flavor of the instance. IV. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS The experiments were performed in order to validate the operation of the GBD IaaS Manager. Therefore, was adopted a methodology, in which three environments were created to support virtual images and instances in a hybrid IaaS cloud, by migrating these elements among registered environments. For the experiments, was used three different IaaS clouds, of which two were private clouds deployed in the laboratory of Grupo de Banco de Dados - GBD (Database Group) infrastructure team and the other one was a public cloud provided by Amazon Web Services [17], as described below: Environment A an IaaS cloud deployed through OpenStack[18] open source solution and distributed into three physical machines; Environment B an IaaS cloud deployed through OpenNebula[19] open source solution and distributed into three physical machines; Environment C an IaaS cloud provided by Amazon Web Services AWS [17] and distributed into its datacenter in São Paulo. Fig. 1. Diagram representing an instance migration through snapshots

4 A. Credential A credential registration is the starting point for using the GBD IaaS Manager tool, so the environments A, B and C were registered. Such module is responsible for receiving and storing data provided by the user and subsequently for obtaining the endpoints of the services available for such credential. In Fig. 2, it is illustrated the registration of environment A, and in Fig. 3, the respective endpoints created are presented. The environment A credential returned several endpoints to the OpenStack API used in its registration, which reports an address for each type of service provided: authentication, image, instance, volume and storage. Whereas, during the registration of environment B and C credentials, the solutions use the EC2 API that requires a single address provided at the moment of the storage to report all services. B. Image The first experiment in this module consists in sending virtual image files to environments A and B registered and in monitoring this process. The files to be sent are described below: File I virtual drive in QEMU Copy On Write format QCOW2 [20] with Linux Ubuntu (32 bits) operating system that was stored in the hard disk drive of the client computer used to connect the tool and that was sent to environment A; File II virtual drive in Amazon Machine Image AMI format [21] with Linux Fedora 16 (32 bits) operating system that is hosted on the Internet and sent to environment B; In Fig. 4, the interface for the image registration regarding File I environment A is presented, provided that the process is similar concerning environment B. The image management module presents four states regarding the process of sending virtual images: standby, sending, error, active. The status standby indicates that an image registration was created in the IaaS provider, but the binary file was not sent yet. On the other hand, the status sending indicates that the virtual image file is being sent, but it is not concluded yet. The status error shows that there was a failure in the process and the image could not be created. Finally, the status active indicates that the file was successfully sent and the image is ready to be used. In Fig. 5, it can be verified that the file were successfully sent to environments A and B as the status for both environments is active. In the second experiment, the sent files were replicated to the other two environments, provided that the experiment was classified into: Phase I to reproduce file I of environment A in environments B and C according to the interface presented in Fig. 6; Phase II to reproduce file II of environments B in environments A and C. The image replication option is accessed through the image management interface presented in Fig. 7. The virtualization architectures of OpenNebula and OpenStack solutions use a platform that supports virtual images in QCOW2 format, while the platform used by AWS does not support these images. When detecting such incompatibility, the tool does not execute the file copy and returns the state of error to the user. Fig. 4. Image registration in environment A Fig. 2. Registration of environment A Fig. 5. Files successfully sent to environment A and B Fig. 3. Environment A endpoints Fig. 6. Interface for the function of replicating an image to environments

5 Fig. 10. Sequence regarding the removal of a virtual image Fig. 7. Image management interface The results of phase I of the replication experiment may be observed in Fig. 8. The copy of file I (Linux Ubuntu (32 bits) to environment B was successfully completed and it created a new image with the same characteristics of the original image. On the other hand, during the copy of the image to environment C, a new state of error was created as expected, due to the incompatibility presented by AWS solution. In phase II, both copies were successfully completed as the file II format (Linux Fedora 16 (32 bits) is support by the three IaaS solutions used, as presented in Fig. 9. In the third experiment, we verified the removal of a virtual image registration. For this, we successfully deleted the defective image that resulted from the copy of QCOW2 file from environment A into C, as illustrated in Fig. 10. According to the results obtained from the described experiments, it can be concluded that the image management module achieved the objectives proposed in the functions related to the sending, replication and removal of virtual images. Fig. 8. Results of phase I of the replication experiment Fig. 9. Result of the migration of phase II C. Instance The first experiment of this module was carried out in two phases: Phase I: execution of instance A1 in environment A as of the virtual image with Ubuntu operating system and with the flavor m1.tiny ; Phase II: execution of instance B1 in environment B as of the virtual image with Fedora operating system and with the flavor m1.tiny. The creating process of a virtual instance presents the following states: allocating, running and error. The status allocating represents that the instance initiated the allocation of computing resources. On the other hand, the status running indicates that the instance concluded the allocation of the resources and initiated its execution. Finally, the status error means that there was a failure in the process and the instance could not be executed. The sequences regarding the states of the instances created can be seen in Fig. 11. As verified, the module created the instances and successfully obtained information about their runtime. The second experiment, also carried out in two phases, aims at verifying the migration capability of the running instances. Both experiment phases are described below: Phase I: Replicate instance A1 to environments B and C; Phase II: Replicate instance B1 to environments A and C. Through the instance management interface, which is exhibited in Fig. 12, it is possible to access the migration option, from which the request to migrate instances A1 and B1 may be visualized as illustrated in Fig. 13. Similarly to the image module, it is expected that the migration of A1 to environment C results in an error in phase I, as the original image format (QCOW2) of the instance is not supported by AWS. The result of phase I is presented in Fig. 14. As expected, the migration of instance A1 to environment C could not be successfully carried out as the image format QCOW2 is not supported by AWS architecture, while the migration of A1 to environment B was successfully completed. As expected, phase II was successfully completed and the migration of instance B1 to environments A and C occurred without any error. The resulting instances can be seen in Fig. 15. Therefore, it may be said that the instance management module worked as expected.

6 decide which provider is the best option to instantiate a virtual machine. Fig. 11. Sequence regarding the states of instances A1 and B1 Fig. 12. Instance management interface Fig. 13. Instance migration interface Fig. 14. Result of the migration of instance A1 Fig. 15. Result of the migration of B1 V. CONCLUSION The GBD IaaS Manager tool supports the management of virtual instances and images in private and hybrid clouds, enabling to migrate these elements among registered environments. The functionalities of virtual instance and image migration were not found in any work in the literature, and so it represents an important contribution, making it easier to manage private and hybrid cloud environment as it enables to balance the workload existing in the private environment and to choose the best local for providing the services. As a future work, we intend to deploy storage resource management, load balancing and automation techniques to REFERENCES [1] J. Repschlaeger, S. Wind, R. Zarnekow, and K. Turowski, A reference guide to cloud computing dimensions: infrastructure as a service classification framework, in th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2012, pp [2] B. Sosinsky, Cloud computing bible. Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons, [3] S. Singhal, A model-based proxy for unified IaaS management, in th International DMTF Academic Alliance Workshop on Systems and Virtualization Management, 2010, pp [4] P. Mell and P. Mell, The NIST Definition of cloud computing. National Institute of Standards and Technology. National Institute of Standards and Technology, vol. 53, no. 6, p. 50, [5] M. Dieder, Um estudo para a implantação de um modelo de gerência para a infraestrutura de computação nas nuvens utilizando soluções de código aberto. Monograph (Undergraduate Course), São Leopoldo: University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos, 2012 [ in Portuguese]. [6] B. S. Lee, S. Yan, D. Ma, and G. Zhao, Aggregating IaaS service, in 2011 Annual SRII Global Conference, 2011, pp [7] J. L. Corrêa and M. C. Visoli, Computação em nuvem: entendendo e implementando uma nuvem privada, Campinas, 2011 [ in Portuguese]. [8] Josyula, M. Orr, and G. Page, Cloud computing: automating the virtualized data center. Indianapolis: Cisco Press, [9] C. Baun, M. Kunze, J. Nimis, and S. Tai, Cloud computing web-based dynamic it services. Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, [10] U. Moghe, P. Lakkadwala, and D. K. Mishra, Cloud computing: survey of different utilization techniques, in 2012 CSI Sixth International Conference on Software Engineering (CONSEG), 2012, pp [11] B. Williams, The economics of cloud computing. Indianapolis: Cisco Press, [12] HybridFox. HybridFox. [Online]. Available: [Accessed: 17-Jun-2013]. [13] Amazon. Amazon EC2 Elastic Cloud Computing. [Online]. Available: [Accessed: 18-Jun-2013]. [14] OpenStack. Starter guide. [Online]. Available: [Accessed: 20-Jun- 2013]. [15] S. Yan, B. S. Lee, G. Zhao, D. Ma, and P. Mohamed, Infrastructure management of hybrid cloud for enterprise users, in th International DMTF Academic Alliance Workshop on Systems and Virtualization Management: Standards and the Cloud (SVM), 2011, pp [16] V. Srinivasmurthy, S. Manvi, R. Gullapalli, D. Sathyamurthy, N. Reddy, H. Dattatreya, S. Singhal, and J. Pruyne, Web2Exchange: a modelbased service transformation and integration environment, in 2009 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, 2009, pp [17] Amazon. AWS - Amazon Web Services. [Online]. Available: [Accessed: 15-Jun-2013]. [18] OpenStack. Open source software for building private and public clouds. [Online]. Available: [Accessed: 15- Jun-2013]. [19] OpenNebula. OpenNebula enterprise cloud and datacenter virtualization. [Online]. Available: [Accessed: 16-Jun-2013]. [20] KVM. QCOW2 KVM. [Online]. Available: [Accessed: 16-Jun-2013]. [21] Amazon. Amazon Machine Images. [Online]. Available: [Accessed: 17-Jun-2013].